Robert C. McLeod

I look forward to my trip to Nahanni Butte and meeting with the leadership there. If it is the will of the community, then I will commit to the Member that we will work closely with the community to see what resources might be needed to work on a long-term plan as far as relocating the community goes. I will commit to the Member that I will work with him and the community.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. We’d be glad to work with the community of Nahanni Butte to work on their long-term plan as far as the flooding goes. We do know that the federal government has come forward with a Disaster Mitigation Policy. We’re not sure of the details yet, but it’s for exactly the type of situation like this where they can mitigate potential floods in the future.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. In my discussions with the Member I did say that I was going to look at these vacant units, because I know that we have a number of vacant units across the Northwest Territories and we tried to get as many clients as we could into them. Those clients we couldn’t get into them, we converted a lot of these over to public housing. I will commit to the Member that I need to follow up on the number of vacant units that are on there.

He raises the point of income, and that’s one that we’ve had discussions about as a corporation. We tried a GAP program a couple of years ago...

Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons Housing has been able to implement a lot of these new programs is because we listened to the rent scale review or the…(inaudible)…policy review to a lot of the suggestions that were made out there. This is one that I will commit to the Member that I will go and have discussions with the corporation, because the Member raises a good point about returning back to the community if you are a resident to that community.

Again, those communities with the LHOs are usually set by the LHO. If they have vacant units, I am sure they may look at special situations such as...

Before all these rents went into place, there was a lot of discussion between the LHO tenant relations officer and the clients to explain the situation. We can have staff go in there again. I have tried a couple of times to travel with the Member into the Sahtu, and I would be willing to go possibly again into the Sahtu after Christmas or after the New Year. But my preference would be to have staff, who know a lot more about how rent is being calculated, explain to the residents of Deline and the Sahtu, and I would be present, too, if things work out the way they should. Thank you, Mr. Speaker...

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. During the consultations across the Northwest Territories on the rent policy review, one of the things that we heard from people was they wanted a system that was fair, more predictable and simple. That’s why we had gone from 421 different rental assessments down to 22. We responded to those concerns. Some of the items that the Member mentioned, the EI payments especially, well, EI payments are usually to provide for the basic necessities of life; food and shelter being two of them, and clothing.

Mr. Speaker, today is National Be a Fan Day, and you will note many of the Members wearing red laces in support of Special Olympics NWT.

I can assure Members of this House that we try having a little bit of flexibility in some of these cases. We do, obviously, I mean we all know that we need some rules, otherwise we’d have just anybody in those units and we may set up a lot of people for failure, which has happened in the past.

As far as the vacant units go, Members of the 16th Assembly will recall that we had 137 vacant units across the Northwest Territories. We had a number in Fort Resolution, we had a number in Gameti. We’ve had a fairly aggressive program in trying to fill them.

We’ve updated Members at the end of the 16th...

We understand the advantages of getting people off the streets and into public housing. That’s why there’s public housing. We have 24 public housing units across the Northwest Territories, and from public housing we like to think that a lot of them can graduate into the home ownership program.

We have approximately 1,600 families we’ve been able to put into the home ownership program over a number of years. We try to be as flexible as possible in getting as many people into some of these programs as we can. For example, with one of the home ownership programs, we allow them to carry up to $5...

Thank you. One of the problems we face in some of the smaller communities is there are not as many transitional opportunities as there are in some of the larger centres, and I think we have to have a look at that. Again, I say if we have units in the communities that are vacant, public housing units, and we’re asking somebody to wait a year, we’d have to review that, and I think we’d have to review some of these on a case-by-case basis to see where we can best assist. There may be some other reasons why folks are not in these houses or in public housing. But I will commit to the Member – and I...